Winter found Qibli in the prey center shortly after midday and poked him with his tail.

“Enough moping,” he said. “We have class.”

“I’m not MOPING,” said Qibli, sitting up and throwing away the banana he’d been staring at for twenty minutes. “YOU’RE moping.”

“I most certainly am not,” said Winter. “IceWing princes never mope.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Qibli said. “I got the word wrong. You’re BROODING.”

“Well, that would be preferable.” Winter drew back his wings and snorted a tiny cloud of ice particles. “But I’m not doing either. I’m going to history class, and so should you.”

“History!” Qibli protested. “How can we possibly sit in a dark cave listening to Webs drone on about the ancient past? This is history, happening right now. We’re in the middle of it, or we should be.”

“Oh, really? What sort of history were you planning to make today?” Winter scoffed. “All the excitement has gone off to the rainforest. We’re just the footnotes.” He poked Qibli with his tail again. “Come on, or Tsunami will yell at us.”

Qibli trailed through the tunnels after him, trying not to look as glum as he felt about the idea of being a footnote in someone else’s heroic saga.

They found their way to the new history cave, several winding corridors away from the one that had been firebombed. This one had a skylight, but it was still too dark, damp, and chilly for Qibli. He missed the wide-open sunshine of the desert. He also wasn’t a big fan of the fact that the cave only had one exit, or the way scrolls were piled in corners like inevitable kindling. Even though Sora was gone now, he couldn’t help thinking of the last attack and what might have happened without Moon’s prophetic warnings.

Tamarin, the injured RainWing, was already there when they arrived. She was circling the cave cautiously, tapping the walls with her talons and sniffing the air.

“Anything we should worry about?” Qibli asked her.

She shook her head. “Unless … do you smell smoke?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he said, inhaling deeply. “And SandWings have a pretty good sense of smell.”

“So do I, normally,” she said. “But I haven’t been able to get the smell of smoke out of my nose since the explosion.” Her wings twitched back and she reached out to touch the cave wall as if reassuring herself it was still there.

Qibli mentally flipped through what he knew about RainWing scales — when they weren’t deliberately changed for camouflage or adornment, they reflected the dragon’s emotions. Tamarin’s today were a muted blue-gray with ripples of white, in between the bandages and scorch marks.

A little sad, Qibli guessed. And Kinkajou turned white when she was attacked and knocked unconscious — so maybe that indicates pain? “Are you all right?” he asked. “Do the burns hurt a lot?”

“Today they do,” she said, wincing. “Mostly I’m worried about Kinkajou, though.”

“Me too,” Qibli admitted. He’d last seen their RainWing friend lying in a bed in the town of Possibility, far across the continent, unable to wake up. That’s one thing I could have done with Darkstalker’s scroll. I would have healed her. I would have healed Tamarin, too, and all the soldiers who were hurt by the war.

Oh, why hadn’t his friends just let him have it? Then Darkstalker would still be under the mountain, Qibli would be fixing everyone’s problems, Kinkajou would be awake, Tamarin would be able to see, and Moon would still be here where he could talk to her every day.

A SeaWing burst into the room, flapping his wings and staring around frantically. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Has anyone seen Princess Anemone?”

Pike. Qibli plucked the name from his memory of the winglet lists. Clawmates with Bigtail — now dead — and Flame — now accused of trying to murder Stonemover. Pike is the SeaWing who’s always defending Anemone and may be working for her mother, Queen Coral.

“Um, yes,” Winter answered him. He peered down his snout at Pike. “Anemone left for the rainforest with all the NightWings and their glorious leader early this morning.”

“Did you literally just say ‘glorious leader’?” Qibli asked.

“Do you literally not recognize sarcasm when you hear it?” Winter retorted.

Nearly everything Winter ever said sounded sarcastic, but Qibli thought he was developing a fairly good sense of when the IceWing was actually being sincere. And the intonation just then had been … troubling, to say the least.

“She left?” Pike cried. “Left the school?” He clutched his head.

“You couldn’t have stopped her,” Qibli said. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“I have to go after her,” Pike said, turning in a circle. “But I don’t know anything about the rainforest! Oh, Queen Coral is going to feed me to the sharks. The princess on her own! With no one to guard her!”

“Prince Turtle was with her,” Winter pointed out.

“I don’t find that reassuring,” Pike snapped.

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Winter said, poking his nose back into his scroll.

“Turtle is great,” Qibli argued. “He’ll watch out for her.” He didn’t dare tell them that Turtle was invisible to Darkstalker. But surely that meant Turtle would be useful protection for his sister … didn’t it?

“Besides,” Tamarin added, “Anemone’s an animus. She can guard herself better than anyone else could.”

Perhaps, Qibli thought, but it depends on what spells Darkstalker has cast on her.

“I have to go after her,” Pike said again. He spun toward the entrance and ran straight into their history teacher.

“Sit down, young dragon,” Webs said, pleasantly but firmly. “It is time for our lesson.”

“I have to go rescue the princess!” Pike cried.

“Fiddlesquids,” Webs said, ushering him back into the cave. “You are a student. What you have to do is fill your mind with knowledge and wisdom.”

Qibli sympathized completely with the frustrated look on Pike’s face. He wanted to rip off the roof of the cavern with his claws and go flying after the other dragons, too.

“Since your two winglets are rather low on numbers at the moment, Silver Winglet will be joining us today,” Webs went on. He flicked a beckoning wing at the hallway and four dragonets filed in.

“Rather low on numbers” is a generous way to describe us, Qibli thought ruefully. He and Winter were the only ones from Jade Winglet still at school, and Tamarin’s Gold Winglet had been equally decimated by the explosion and Sora’s attempted assassination of Icicle.

But wait — Qibli perked up. This meant he’d get to see Ostrich, the SandWing in Silver Winglet. She was the daughter of Queen Thorn’s most trusted general, Six-Claws, and Qibli had promised to look out for her while they were at school.

He hadn’t seen her yet since his return to Jade Mountain, although he’d gone looking the night before. Princess Anemone had been the only one in the cave they shared. When he poked his snout in she was scattering jewelry around, clearly in such a bad temper that he hadn’t dared stay to wait for Ostrich.

But the curious little SandWing wasn’t among the dragonets settling into the classroom. Qibli checked his mental list — there was a big-shouldered MudWing named Sepia, a placid-looking RainWing named Boto who settled himself next to Tamarin, a haughty IceWing called Changbai who did not sit next to Winter, and a small-boned dusky orange SkyWing named Thrush, who took one of the front-row seats and gazed intently at the teacher.

Where is Ostrich? Qibli wondered. She’s usually so excited for her classes, no matter how boring they are. How did she escape this torture?

“Now where were we?” Webs said in his maddeningly slow voice. “Ah yes, the five hundred years of transformation and resettling that followed the Scorching … ”

Thrush raised one of his talons and spoke without waiting to be called on. “Can you teach us about Darkstalker today, please?”

“Yes!” Changbai agreed. “He doesn’t seem anything like the dragon from our old stories. In that he did not immediately start murdering all of us.”

“Three moons,” said Boto, his claws turning lime green. “Is, uh … is he likely to do that?”

“Darkstalker,” Webs grumbled. “Wrecking my lesson plans. That’s over three thousand years after the Scorching! We’re not scheduled to get to that era for months.”

“But we need to know about him now,” Tamarin insisted.

“Because of the maybe murdering?” Boto said. “I think I agree yes, I would like to hear about that? Or more specifically about how not happening that is?”

“We can see with our eyes what kind of dragon Darkstalker is,” Winter said scornfully. “I trust my own judgment better than any old history scroll.”

“Says the dragon whose sister turned out to be a murderer,” Sepia suddenly interjected.

Winter leaped to his feet and whirled toward her, his teeth bared. Qibli darted in between them, wings outstretched, ready to hold Winter back or help him fight, whichever turned out to be necessary.

“It was a MudWing who blew up the other cave, not my sister!” Winter flared.

“But she did it because of what your sister did,” Sepia said stoutly.

“Winter, let’s be fair,” Qibli pointed out. “We just stopped Icicle from trying to murder Starflight and then Glory, so technically … ”

“You’re not helping, Qibli!” Winter growled at him.

“Now now now now now.” Webs fretted, flapping his wings. “The war is behind us. That’s the whole point of this place. No fighting allowed!”

Behind him, Qibli saw Sunny poke her head into the classroom. She scanned the dragonets and frowned slightly, then disappeared again.

That was worrying.

“All right, all right, we can talk about Darkstalker,” Webs said. “If you’ll all sit down and shut up, I’ll tell you what I know about him.” He rolled up the scroll on his desk, muttering something like, “and I thought Tsunami was bad.”

Winter subsided back into his seat, looking baleful.

“Darkstalker is the son of a NightWing named Foeslayer and an IceWing prince named Arctic,” Webs rattled off. “He lived over two thousand years ago in the ancient NightWing kingdom, and he was the first animus dragon to hatch in the NightWing tribe — a gift he inherited from his father. But he rapidly became too dangerous to control, and he was plotting to assassinate the queen and steal her power when his friends Fathom and Clearsight conspired to stop him, stuffing him under a mountain and putting him to sleep forever.”

“Clearly not forever,” Changbai interrupted.

“Right,” said Webs, a little flustered. “Until now. But he has emerged a changed dragon, humbled and unambitious, who only wants to use his powers for good. So, nothing to worry about; can we get back to our actual lesson?”

“Um,” said Qibli, “wait. How exactly do we know he’s humbled and unambitious now?”

“Because it’s obvious,” Winter said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like he immediately demanded to be made king of the NightWings or anything.”

With impeccable comic timing, the slate in Qibli’s pouch gave a little jump. He waited until no one was looking at him anymore, then pulled it out and hid it under his desk. He could see a message from Turtle appearing on the surface, agonizingly slowly.

DARKSTALKER WANTS TO BE NIGHTWING KING. NIGHTWINGS DECIDING WHAT THEY WANT.

Qibli nearly laughed, but he didn’t want to draw attention to the slate.

And also, it was too terrifying to be funny.

Tell me more, Turtle, he pleaded silently. What’s happening? How are the NightWings reacting? What about Glory? And Moon … does Moon want him to be king? Is she still acting like herself?

But nothing else appeared on the slate, and after a few minutes, Qibli had to accept that was Turtle’s entire message. He sighed.

Darkstalker as king. I can see the logic. It’s a choice between two difficult, unusual alternatives: to have a king or to be ruled by a RainWing. He knew several of the NightWings intensely disliked the idea of being ruled by Queen Glory. He’d seen it on their faces in the rainforest, even before Moon confirmed that she’d heard such grumblings in their minds.

No matter what Glory did, how hard she worked, how intelligently she solved their problems, or how fairly and kindly she treated them, some NightWings would never accept her, simply because she was a RainWing.

But what kind of king would Darkstalker be? Would he be content with ruling his tribe? Did his ambitions stop there?

Qibli would have liked to believe they did, but the last words of Moon’s prophecy kept repeating on a loop in his head.

Something is coming to shake the earth. (That was definitely Darkstalker, rising from his prison.)

Something is coming to scorch the ground. (He was pretty sure this was Darkstalker, too.)

Jade Mountain will fall beneath thunder and ice. (Why? When? How soon?)

Unless the lost city of night can be found.

He brooded on that last line for a moment. Darkstalker knew where the lost city was. Was there something there that could stop him? Something Fathom and Clearsight left behind, perhaps, in case their old friend/enemy ever emerged? That’s what Qibli would have done if he were them — left some kind of backup plan. But how would anyone know what it was, or how to use it?

Sunny appeared in the doorway again. “Webs,” she whispered. “I need to borrow Qibli.”

Webs flicked his tail impatiently and Qibli leaped to his feet, just barely managing to keep the joy off his face.

“Thank you,” he whispered to Sunny as he bounded out into the hallway. “Can you do that every time I have history? I mean, didn’t you go through this exact same suffering when you were younger? How can you inflict it on other innocent souls?”

“Lessons with Webs were awesome,” Sunny said sternly — or, at least, Qibli guessed that was her attempt at a stern face. “You be grateful you don’t have to do battle training with Kestrel.” Her expression shifted, worry lines creeping across her forehead. “Qibli — have you seen Ostrich today?”

“No,” he said, instantly alert. “I haven’t seen her since I got back to Jade Mountain.”

“I had breakfast with her yesterday morning,” Sunny said. “But when everything happened with my father and Flame — I forgot to check on her last night, and then today I haven’t been able to find her anywhere.”

Qibli’s heart sank as Sunny rubbed her temples anxiously.

“I’m terribly afraid,” she said, “that Ostrich is missing.”